This page describes the ground operations plan for HERON MK.II. This document will describe the main commands and data required for operations, however the framing is not covered here.
Prior to reading this document, you should become familiar with the command protocol and the spacecraft architecture:
SS-HERON-0008 describes the structure of the data that is to be sent between the Earth and HERON. SS-HERON-0009 describes how HERON operates. The EnduroSat ESTTC document describes the protocol that the EnduroSat UHF module operates with. Both documents are required to understand the operations plan outlined below.
ESTTC data is given in ASCII, with the exception that symbols wrapped in <...> should be not be interpreted literally and instead should be translated to the ASCII representation.
All data (ESTTC, PIPE mode) is encapsulated in the Endurosat Packet Structure. Use of the CRC field is highly recommended.
This section describes the actions to be taken as soon as possible after launch. The objective of these commands is to establish communications and do an initial healthcheck of the satellite prior to entering the main mission lifespan.
Within five minutes of HERON’s deployment, Firefly (formerly Spaceflight) will send an email to @Anonymous and @Reid Sox-Harris with the time of deployment and state vector. Immediately after receiving this email, the state vector should be plugged into Hermes (orbit propagation tool) which will generate a TLE. The SpaceTrack website should also be monitored to receive an updated TLE once HERON is acquired by their radars. Either way, the TLE should be input into a pass calculator to determine the soonest satisfactory pass over Toronto.
A satisfactory pass is one that has a maximum elevation greater than 45 degrees and is not significantly obstructed by building geometry at the ground station site.
In the event that the soonest satisfactory pass is within 30 minutes of the deployment time, the subsequent satisfactory pass shall be selected instead due to the 30 minute boot timeout on HERON.
At this time, the TLE should also be loaded into the ground station’s tracking software, with tracking enabled.
To ensure a successful tracking, ensure that no other TLEs are loaded, that the location of the groundstation is entered correctly, and the time on the groundstation is accurate to 5 seconds.
When first booted up, the EnduroSat UHF module is in ESTTC mode. Therefore, we will be essentially only establishing contact with the UHF module rather than the satellite as a whole at first. However, successful contact here (at all) means that at minimum, the UHF module and the EPS system are functional.
At the time of AoS, the groundstation should be actively tracking HERON. The groundstation will continuously send a Status Control Word read request at 1 second intervals until a response is returned.